Hamlet (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon)
Verdict: Lost at sea
Maybe I’m giving Shakespeare too much credit, but I’m pretty sure there’s a reason why he set his great tragedy, Hamlet, in a castle.
After all, he did have to accommodate the whole Danish court, an angry mob, a touring theatre company and passing armies.
But that, alas, has not deterred the artistic director-elect of London’s Old Vic, Rupert Goold, from fearlessly setting the play on a boat. The Titanic, no less; on its way to disaster in 1912.
It’s an idea which, according to the production’s designer, Es Devlin, came to Goold in a dream.
To this doomed, ocean-going liner he transfers the whole of aforementioned Early Modern Danish society – dressed in Edwardian costumes.
The result is a show in which his team, led by Luke Thallon as the avenging Prince of Denmark, grapple with a needless set of problems of their own creation, before finally, and inevitably, going under, three hours later.
How, for example, does Hamlet’s friend and rival Laertes get to and from university in Wittenberg when the ship is mid-Atlantic? Hitch a lift on a helicopter? Hail a passing aircraft carrier?
The show, led by Luke Thallon as the avenging Prince of Denmark, grapples with a needless set of problems of their own creation, before finally, and inevitably, going under, three hours later
One of the (many) unfortunate consequences of this ocean folly is Nancy Carroll’s Camilla-ish Gertrude is robbed of one of the most beautiful speeches in all of Shakespeare
Thallon rides roughshod through Shakespeare’s verse, randomly emphasising some words, repeating others, lapsing into unpregnant pauses
And why is there a team of avant garde actors (with a change of Greek costumes) on board? Are they emigrating stowaways?
Then there’s the awkward problem of requiring a grave-digger on board. This is solved by having TWO of them – one with a suitcase containing Yorick’s skull.
The mystifying set-up is not helped by Thallon’s performance. He rides roughshod through Shakespeare’s verse, randomly emphasising some words, repeating others, lapsing into unpregnant pauses. I was often unable to follow his train of thought.
Moreover, he breaks all the rules of acting that Hamlet sets the players (no mouthing, arm waving or intemperate passion).
Poor guy, even his gun wouldn’t fire to kill the meddling courtier Polonius (Elliot Levey) at the show I saw on Wednesday.
One of the (many) unfortunate consequences of this ocean folly is Nancy Carroll’s Camilla-ish Gertrude is robbed of one of the most beautiful speeches in all of Shakespeare: relating the death of Hamlet’s old flame Ophelia under a willow by a brook (both scarce in the North Atlantic).
Meanwhile, Jared Harris’s uncle-king, who has killed Hamlet’s father, is even more tortured than the prince, muttering and howling to himself when alone.
Thallon breaks all the rules of acting that Hamlet sets the players (no mouthing, arm waving or intemperate passion)
L-R: Lewis Shepherd in the role of Laertes and Luke Thallon in the role of Hamlet
Jared Harris’s uncle-king, who has killed Hamlet’s father, is even more tortured than the prince, muttering and howling to himself when alone
The show is set to tour next year, almost certainly with a different cast and reduced set. Pictured: Anton Lesser (Ghost of Old Hamlet)
The show is set to tour next year, almost certainly with a different cast and reduced set. Until then you can see Devlin’s design: an impressive deck listing, lurching and groaning as the ghost ship Elsinore ploughs through icy seas, leaving projections of black churning water in its wake.
It finally tilts to 45 degrees, tipping the cast overboard in a finale dismally abridged to suit the pointless seafaring ambitions.
It is an audacious concept – not unlike the launching of the Titanic itself. But as passengers on the Titanic discovered, with audacity sometimes comes an iceberg of hubris. One that sends this production to a watery grave.
Until March 29.
Doubt (Ustinov Studio, Bath)
Verdict: Dark dilemma
You might expect a play with the title Doubt, featuring a Catholic priest, two teaching nuns, and a Catholic parent of a young altar boy, to be about that leap of faith that is the permanent and arguably essential state of any believer.
That is – undoubtedly – the underlying doubt simmering beneath John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 ‘parable’ set in 1964, when the writer was at a Catholic school in the Bronx.
But the more specific doubt is whether Father Flynn, popular chaplain and basketball coach, is guilty as charged by school principal, Sister Aloysius, of inappropriate intimacy with the school’s first black student, 12-year-old Donald Muller.
Lindsay Posner’s superbly performed production, unravelling in near darkness but for an illuminated crucifix, is appropriately filled with suspicion and uncertainty.
Sometimes too much. Which is the flaw of a play which under-explores the motivation of Maxine Peake’s ferocious, flinty, impervious Sister.
There is no doubting her merciless implacability. Black-bonneted, she looks like a refugee from Arthur Miller’s Crucible.
Once married (what happened?), she considers art and music a ‘waste of time’, boys ‘a different breed’ and the priest’s nails suspiciously long. Is she simply a man-hater? (She does not seem remotely concerned about little Donald.)
By contrast, young, trusting Sister James (Holly Godliman, great name, in a striking stage debut) shines like a good deed in a naughty world.
Ben Daniels is splendidly slippery, with a charm that occasionally errs on smarm. Summoned to Sister’s office, he slumps casually into her chair. Is he overdoing the chumminess, or asserting his power?
The best scene is between Sister Aloysius and Donald’s mother (excellent Rachel John), who stoutly refuses to join the nun’s crusade because her son’s graduation is her priority. ‘Leave these things alone,’ says pragmatic Mrs Muller, who suspects her son may be ‘that way’ but is absolutely sure that her husband will ‘kill him over a thing like this’.
In a tight 90-minute piece, two lines resound: ‘Did you never do anything wrong?’ and ‘Certainty is an emotion, not a fact.’ Food for thought.
GEORGINA BROWN
East Is South (Hampstead Theatre, London)Â
Verdict: All over the place
East Is South is, in all honesty, a play that’s way beyond my pay grade. But I suspect it’s also way beyond the pay grade of its author Beau Willimon – creator of the American (Kevin Spacey) version of the British TV hit House Of Cards.
In essence, it’s about a female coder, Lena (Kaya Scodelario), accused of corrupting a secret US artificial intelligence project that has God-like potential thanks to ‘self-directed evolution’.
The only thing this AI struggles with is paradoxes (such as the title).
But, helped by her undercover handler from the National Security Agency, Lena has now fixed that flaw.
That, at any rate, is what I think is going on, in a play that tries to set out a symmetry between an omniscient supercomputer and a mystical notion of universal consciousness.
This is presented in a patchwork of arcane theological riffs and academic CVs. Willimon’s characters, in other words, seem to have code running through their veins, not blood.
Luckily for him, fine actors including Nathalie Armin’s tenacious interrogator and Cliff Curtis’s professor, babbling about God and the universe, do a great job of seeming on top of their briefs.
And Scodelario appears to be entranced by the mysteries of her own creation, just as her boyfriend (Luke Treadaway) is with the compositions of Johan Sebastian Bach.
Staged on an almost completely grey office set, with matching costumes, Ellen McDougall’ production offers no visual relief as it flits mystifyingly between multiple directions like a dysfunctional compass.
PATRICK MARMION
